Tubes for Eastern Electric Minimax Tube DAC?

Afternoon gents

I used to own the Eastern Electric MiniMax DAC Plus and I liked rolling in 12AT7 tubes in it. From other forums I found that you can roll 12AT7 tubes into this DAC with no problems at all. The 12AT7 tubes I liked to roll into it were Mullard 12AT7 and GE JAN 6201 12AT7 equivalents.

After trying many different tubes, I keep going back to leaving the tube out and keeping the heater off. To me it sounds much better this way. Rolling the opamps was more rewarding than rolling the tubes. There is a thread somewhere on this. It has been a while since I did this. However, all in all, a very good DAC. As they say YMMV.
Enjoy and have fun.

Hi. I just picked up an Eastern Electric Tube DAC Plus (aka Minimax DAC Plus, the no volume control version) on Audiogon and tried some 12au7 tube rolling. It came with a PSVane which was OK but I knew I could do better. Mullard NOS was disappointing, fuzzy with no low or high end extension. JAN Philips Blue NOS was very nice with solid bass and extended treble and very good tube dimensionality also. Best so far is NOS Toshiba short plate halo getter. All frequencies are there with lots of tube presence and great dimensionality.

Hello,

I have tried 4 different NOS tubes in mine (ranging in price from $25 to $100 per tube). When all is said and done, I like the stock tube better than any of the NOS tubes! The designer voiced the DAC very carefully in my opinion, every NOS tube I tried sounded a bit dull in comparison.
All of that being said, as far as tube dealers go, in my mind Upscale Audio is the place to buy tubes, if you really want the best. They burn them in for 3 days prior to measuring / matching. First class operation.